ESPN loses more talent: J.A. Adande leaves to focus on teaching career at Northwestern

J.A. Adande, a fixture at the sports network in print, online and on television, will be devoting his full attention to the job he took last year as an associate professor and director of sports journalism at his alma mater, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications.

J.A. Adande will focus on academics. (Photo courtesy ESPN)

“Mainly, I couldn’t do two jobs at once,” Adande told The Big Lead. “Last year, when I started the Northwestern job, I really wasn’t ready to say I used to work for ESPN. I wasn’t quite ready to give that up. But now, I’m at a place where I just want to focus on Northwestern. I really want to wake up in the morning and obsess over one thing.”

Adande’s departure is just the latest as ESPN shed around 100 journalists and TV personalities with layoffs in the spring. Many of those affected were some of the network’s most visible people, like Ed Werder, John Clayton, Jayson Stark, Andy Katz and Britt McHenry.

Adande, who worked at the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times before joining the network, was an ESPN.com columnist and sideline reporter focusing on the NBA for 10 years and has appeared on “Around the Horn” since 2002. He also filled in on “PTI,” and may appear from time to time on that show and “Around the Horn.”

“ESPN was not my dream job,” Adande tweeted Thursday morning. “ESPN was the place I left my dream job to work for because it was even better. I was fortunate enough to get a sports column at the LA Times when I was in my late 20s, thanks to Rick Jaffe and Bill Dwyre. It was the culmination of the journey I envisioned when I embarked on my journalism path more than a decade earlier. Then the opportunity to go to ESPN came along and I had the chance to work on the industry’s biggest platform, with the greatest resources.”